If you find yourself asking “What happened?” at the end
of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, don’t
assume you’re alone. This is not because it’s confounding to the point of being
indecipherable, but rather for its insistence on avoiding the clichés of spy thrillers
that we’ve grown so accustomed to.
To summarize the plot could take all day. Based on the
John le Carré novel, the story is set at the upper echelons of British
Intelligence in the thick of the Cold War, when Britain and Russia each had
spies working to subvert the other and each likely had moles working in the
other’s foreign office. Le Carré knows something about British Intelligence,
having worked there for many years before retiring and devoting himself full
time to writing spy thrillers. His work is the antithesis to Ian Fleming’s
James Bond series, which rely heavily on action and thrills, where Bond’s moral
clarity is rarely, if ever, questioned. The characters that le Carré creates
live in a world of moral ambiguity. Their conflicts are within their own
offices and directed internally much more than toward any foreign power. That
this story involves the presence of a well-placed mole at the top of British
Intelligence is just par for the course.
